BARR'S BEAUTIFUL ENGLISH DAFFODILS —continual. 
And so one goes on, gathering wisdom and filling one’s hands with specimen 
blooms. This one is remarkable for the deep vivid brilliancy of its yellow, 
another for the size of its trumpet ; this one is noticeable for its uniformity of 
colouring, and that one for the variety in its shades of yellow ; this was found 
in a romantic district of Northern Spain, that one has come from Portugal, and 
a third has been produced by hybridization in England. And so one moves on, 
at every step getting the honour of an introduction to some proud dame high 
up at the Court of Queen Flora— now the Lady Jane and now the Fair Helen, 
the Lady Grosvenor or the Countess of Annesley. It is delicious to look at a 
cluster of them all fairly in the face, to breathe in something of their lusty 
vigour, and to trudge off homo with them with something of the exultation 
with which Paris ran away with Helen, or Bois-Guilbert bore off ltebecca. 
This firm has specially ransacked Spain from north to east and west, 
and Portugal and the French and Spanish Pyrenees, and what with those they 
have found, and those produced in England by cross fertilization, the variety 
is immense. We may now, if we will, have a constant series of daffodils from 
January till June, and in all sorts of situations. Nothing of the kind can be 
more delightful for the centre of a bed or an irregular clump on the fringe of a 
shrubbery than a good well-grown group of Golden Spur— a great favourite, by 
the way, in Covent Garden, a magnificent trumpet daffodil of brilliant colour 
and noble form— or of Countess of Annesley, rich and varied in colour. For 
front situations there are many varieties of dainty little pigmies — such as 
Cyclamiueus, Nanus, Minor, Minimus, and so forth, very dainty in form and 
pure and brilliant in colour. Others are especially adapted to rock-work, but 
the most exquisite effects are to be had by letting the stronger and showier 
kinds grow their own way in the turf of some sylvan glade backed by woods 
or shrubberies. The spring green of the glass, the lusty vigour of the foliage, 
and the free growing and the splendid colouring of the daffodils seem altogether 
to embody the very spirit of the spring — 
Lusty spring all dight in leaves of flowers. 
We owe to foreign countries and to the cunning of English hybridizers most of 
our narcissi, but we have our own indigenous daffodil nevertheless, and there 
are many parts of England where daffadowndillies still perk up their blhssoms 
in the fields just as their forbears did when Shakespeare noted that they came 
before the swallows dare. They were the old Lent lilies, the affodyles, as our 
forefathers called them, an old English name which signified “that which 
cometh early,” and they were probably at one time of day quite in the fore- 
front of the great floral procession of the year, the trumpeters that led the 
way in the “ roaring moon,” and were followed by all the pomp and beauty of 
the floral year, culminating in the roses of June and July. 
BARR & SON, 12 King Street, Covent Garden, London. 
SURBITON NURSERIES, LONG DITTON, Surbiton Station, South Western Rail and 
close to the Surbiton New Recreation Grounds. 
Barr’s Descriptive Catalogue of English Daffodils, free on application. 
Barr's Descriptive General Bulb Catalogue for all Seasons, free on application. 
Barr’s Hardy Plant Catalogue of all that is best for Flower Beds , Flower 
Borders, and Cutting. 
Barr’s Catalogue of the Newest and Best Sorts of Vegetable Seeds, to secure a 
supply for the kitchen the year round. 
Barr's Catalogue of Hardy and Greenhouse Flower Seeds , all of the best kinds. 
Barr's English Amateur May-flowering Tulips. 
Fresh Seed Just to hand. 
ARISTOLOCHIA ELEGANS, a new Greenhouse Climber, free from the objectionable odour 
which characterises the species of this geniis ; colour rich purple-crimson, sprinkled 
over a white ground, the colour shading deeper as it descends into the throat of 
the flower, per pkt., 1/, 1/0, & 2/6. 
CENTROSEMA PLUMIEK.II, tine greenhouse plant, 1/ per packet. 
TREE TOMATO ( Cyphomandra betacea), 1/- per packet. 
IPHIGENIA R0BU8TA, greenhouse Liliaceous Bulb, 1/ per packet. 
